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They may never go on the CN Tower’s EdgeWalk, but acrophobics can get over fear of heights

Prehistoric genetic imprinting makes us predisposed to be apprehensive of heights. But treatment can help acrophobics get over their terror, though it might not get them on the CN Tower’s Edgewalk.

Acrophobics are fine looking up, but don't ask them to look down. (dreamstime)

By Mary OrmsbyFeature Writer

Fri., May 13, 2011

Everyone can look up, but not everyone can look down.

For acrophobics, peering at the earth below is a horrific sensation.

That would rule out EdgeWalk, the CN Tower’s new 116-storey attraction announced last week, for those who won’t even peer over a condo balcony. A body harness and non-slip shoes will secure thrill seekers this summer to the EdgeWalk path — a 1.5-metre ledge that encircles the tower’s main pod. But the safety measures don’t make the adventure appealing to this man who gets the shakes on a stepladder.

“I am terrified of heights,” says the 39-year-old, sipping a morning coffee with three co-workers, the CN Tower a five-minute walk away. “I ran with the bulls in Spain, but I won’t climb a stepladder.”

He declines to give his name, citing concerns about his employer. But even as his buddies tease him, he details his feelings.

“It’s a feeling of dread and terror,” he explains. “Looking up is fine, but looking down, my insides turn to mush. It’s a paralyzing fear.”

The burly, bench-pressing man — he can hoist 300 pounds comfortably — is not alone in his jelly-legged response to being off the ground. Fear of heights is the second most common phobia, after fear of animals including snakes, spiders and dogs.

This aversion to high places is also human nature. It’s a survival mechanism rooted in genetic programming from our hunter-gatherer days, a fright response monitored by our natural alarm system — the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in our brain — and experienced as adrenalin rushes.

“There is this innate fear of heights that, if you think about it, means we don’t want to be putting ourselves in situations where we might die,” says Dave Davies, a psychologist with the anxiety disorders program at the Royal Ottawa Health Care Group and a clinical professor at the University of Ottawa.

“Heights have always been an issue through the history of human life. So we all have a disposition to be apprehensive or at least a bit uneasy around high places.”

Early experiences may contribute to an all-consuming fear, adds Davies.

“Whether it’s falling off a diaper table or a ladder or if it’s a scary situation on a balcony and mom reacts quite strongly (i.e., her child sees she’s scared), then that, coupled with our genetic predispositions, can be the right ingredients for developing a phobia.”

But not everyone who gets queasy when peering over a 20th floor balcony or anxious when walking over a glass floor has an actual phobia as defined by the medical community.

A “specific phobia” is a fear of a precise object or situation, says Martin Antony, a professor of psychology at Ryerson University and co-author of Overcoming Fear of Heights and The Anti-Anxiety Workbook: Proven Strategies to Overcome Worry, Panic, Phobias, and Obsessions.

“In addition to having an extreme, unrealistic, excessive fear, to be diagnosed with a specific phobia the fear has to cause interference in somebody’s life — it affects their work or their social life, for instance,” Antony says.

A height phobia would prevent a person from visiting friends in a highrise or taking a new job because the office was several storeys up.

Davies estimates about 20 per cent of the general population is “somewhat fearful” of heights, while those with the life-impairing phobia is around 5 per cent.

Glass floors, even though in an enclosed space like the one in the CN Tower, affect people differently when visual cues send mixed signals to the brain. Some people will lie on the floor to be photographed or kids will jump on it. Others, petrified, won’t put a toe on the glass.

“You can see the distance between you and the ground and that’s sending information to your brain saying, ‘Wow, you’re in trouble here,’ ” Davies explains. “So that gets the adrenalin pumping.

“At the same time, another part of your brain is saying, ‘Hey, but I’m safe.’ So the person who’s more of a thrill-seeker will take . . . those anxious feelings, and say ‘This is exciting.’ It’s the same feelings we have when we’re anxious as when we’re very excited, it’s just our interpretation of them changes.”

The good news for phobia sufferers is that treatment can be effective in conquering or at least minimizing fears.

Psychiatrist Dr. Adam Stein, medical director of Toronto’s Metamorphosis clinic, says he’s “a great believer in hypnosis,” one of the several methods he uses with patients.

“Hypnosis is just a form of communication,” Stein says. “Every time you’ve been persuaded, convinced, manipulated or seduced, elements of hypnosis are being used. It’s just in this case, it’s being deliberately done. People go into trances in physicians’ offices because they want to be nurtured, I think, and they want someone to tell them it’s all okay.”

Davies and Antony, however, use exposure therapy. It gradually introduces phobic patients to the situation that scares them until they feel they are comfortable and in control in those environments. For heights, it could climbing a staircase without railings, riding a long escalator or standing atop of a ski hill.

“I believe in what the research tells us and right now, the evidence is so strong with specific phobias that exposure therapy is the therapy of choice over everything else,” Davies says.

There’s now even a virtual component to exposure therapy. Davies says some anxiety programs across Ontario have virtual reality systems through which “we can actually put people on top of a building in a virtual world.

“They’re wearing goggles, they’re wearing earphones and, basically, they see and hear things as if they are in that environment,” the psychologist says. “We might be able to set up the building with the 20th floor that we’d like to put the patient on right here in the clinic.”

One last thing Davies hopes anxious people won’t fear? Asking for help.

“Far too few people actually get help for their phobias. They are certainly not alone, not when you think 11 per cent of the population has (various) specific phobias. That’s a whole lot of Canadians.”

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